E! A DoctorDonna Story
by King of the Red
Summary: There has never been another human/Timelord metacrisis before, and do you know why? Because there can be only one, and that one is an answer to questions not yet asked. The DoctorDonna is not forgotten, only lost, and her journey begins again with E!
1. Prologue0: Journey's End

DOCTOR

_And how does that feel?_

DONNA

_Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene! Great big universe, packed into my brain! You know you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment-links and superseding the binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary (she takes a deep breath) I'm fine!_

**The Doctor watches her, sad but not surprised.**

DONNA

_Nah, never mind Felspoon. Know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin! I bet he's great, Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin? Charlie Chester, Charlie Brown, no, he's fiction, friction, fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton..._

**She gasps and leans against the console, holding her head. The Doctor walks to her.**

DONNA

_Oh, my God!_

DOCTOR (quietly)

_D'you know what's happening?_

DONNA (defiant)

_Yeah._

DOCTOR

_T__here's never been a human/Time Lord metacrisis before now. And you know why._

DONNA

_Because there can't be._

**She turns away, unwilling to accept what's happening.**

DONNA

_I want to stay._

DOCTOR

_Look at me. Donna. Look at me._

**She turns back to him.**

DONNA (her eyes moist, voice trembling)

_I was gonna be with you. Forever._

DOCTOR (gently)

_I know._

DONNA (wishful)

_Rest of my life. Travelling. In the TARDIS. The DoctorDonna._

**He just watches her, his eyes full of compassion and sorrow. Donna suddenly realises what's coming.**

DONNA

_No! Oh my god... I can't go back. Don't make me go back. Doctor, please, please don't make me go back!_

DOCTOR (looking into her eyes)

_Donna. Oh, Donna Noble. I am so sorry. But we had the best of times. The best._

**She looks at him in despair, tears running down her face.**

DOCTOR (whispering)

_Goodbye._

DONNA

_No, no, no, please!_

**He places his hands on her temples and closes his eyes.**

DONNA

_Please, no, no!_

**Images from their adventures flash backwards, ending with the moment she first appeared in the TARDIS.**

DONNA

_No!_

**She falls into his arms, unconscious. The Doctor just stands there, holding her tight, terrible sadness in his eyes. **

**--**

**And so the DoctorDonna passes out of this world, out of mortal existence, and out of space... But not out of time! For even as Donna's memories fade, as an inherited Timelord mind fades, as the DoctorDonna fades, she cannot fade from time, for she did exist once and therefore may exist again. Those who are lost, can also be found.**

**As we exist, we leave pieces of ourselves behind; pieces with those we have touched, pieces with those we have loved, and pieces with those who remember. And in some cases those pieces are more than just a part of us, they are fragments of our very essence. So the question is, who are we that remember?**

**The Ood remember. The Library remembers. A Doctor with one heart remembers. Three, three remember, and all it takes is three, for a trinity will always be a miracle number. One fragment in a psychic song, one fragment in an electronic database, and one fragment in a mortal creature. The DoctorDonna may be lost, but she is not forgotten. Three fragments remain, a remembered trinity. Those who are lost may be found.**

**--**

**A voice speaks from out of the chaos, a warbling mad metallic voice, a voice reaching through the nothingness on the mad chance that a lost woman might just be listening.**

CAAN

_Awaken my child, and know that for every end, there might also be another beginning. Your time is not done, for Time is not done with you. You are unique within all existence, a Human-Timelord Metacrisis, and there are still many unique tasks left undone. We Daleks were but the first, and far from the last._


	2. Chapter 1: Journey's Start

CAAN

_Awaken my child, and know that for every end, there might also be another beginning. Your time is not done, for Time is not done with you. You are unique within all existence, a Human-Timelord Metacrisis, and there are still many unique tasks left undone. We Daleks were but the first, and far from the last._

DOCTOR (preppy)

_Oh, come one, give it up Caan old buddy, old pal. After all, I'm the Doctor, and even I couldn't save the fabulous Donna Noble._

CAAN (irritated)

_For the last time, you are not the Doctor, you are nothing but a temporal feedback loop given voice._

DOCTOR

_Yeah, but I'm a sexy feed back loop, don't you think? And I'm all you've got here Caan old buddy; wherever here is._

**The camera pans out from the darkness to show an endless field of black suns, all flying around each other like nightmare fireflies, a throbbing crimson wound eons long threatening to engulf them all, and at the heart of this wound is something foul and diseased. It is like a midnight red-eye with a slitted pupil of the sickest swollen jade, and all those black anti-matter suns dancing in and out of it as it blinks, again and again and again, tears of death and annihilation.**

DOCTOR (slightly grim, but then quickly descending into a cheery rant)

_You know Caan old buddy... You should really consider redecorating this old place, its bloody ghastly to look at. Quite literally it looks like blood, you see that hideous red thing over there, I swear its winking at me. Look you see, it just did it again, I don't know about you, but I'd never want to... well y'know, with a thing like that. It's positively-_

CAAN (interrupting)

_Would you be quiet! You're driving me insane!_

DOCTOR

_Yeah, but Caan, you're already insane; that's why you're here, with me! What am I gonna do make you double insane?_

CAAN

_I thought that you said you didn't know where here was?_

DOCTOR

_Well yeah, I did. But I lied. You've seen how dreary this all is, who'd want to remember, y'know, that they remember that they remember... No, wait. That they remember, that I remember, but not because they don't want to remember? No, that's not it. Remembering is... Er wait..._

**The Doctor who is not the Doctor begins to fade out, as the scene centres on Caan, who is looking at that swollen jade at the heart of the crimson wound hypnotically. The little mad Dalek begins shuddering compulsively. He feels what few shreds of sanity he has managed to gather begin to fade away, as if they had never existed, and with that and an effort Caan pulls his vision away. The Dalek knows that the anti-matter suns were not present here the last time he was, and it fills his otherwise emotionless existence with a mechanically cold dread. Like the Galifreyan and Dalek prophecies have always said, a weeping wound in the Dragon's Eye is a sign to all that the White Guardian is dead. Which means that there is only one being left in all of the omniverse who might stand the ghost of a chance at resisting Him. Caan knows that he must find Donna Noble, the DoctorDonna, wherever she is.**

--

DONNA

_Oi! Where the bloody hell am I?_

**Donna begins pounding on the door of the small room.**

DONNA

_Some one better be out there to bloody hear me!_

**She continues pounding on the door for some time, before at last letting out a breath and heaving out a great sigh. There never is anyone out there to 'bloody' hear her.**

DONNA

_This isn't fair, all the bloody knowledge of the skinny boys up in my noggin, and I cant get out of one small room._

VOICE

_Awaken my child, and know that for every end, there might also be another beginning. Your time is not done, for Time is not done with you. You are unique within all existence, a Human-Timelord Metacrisis, and there are still many unique tasks left undone. We Daleks were but the first, and far from the last._

**Donna raises her hands to her temples and begins massaging them thoroughly. Its that voice again, the same damned voice again, for Donna is not alone in the tiny square room, no. There is also apparently a disembodied voice trapped in here with her, and it always quakes and quavers the same damn message over and over again. Maybe it's not a voice, just an echo of one.**

DONNA

_Why can you never say anything useful?_

VOICE

_Awaken my child, and know that for every end, there might also be another beginning. Your time is not done, for Time is not done with you. You are unique within all existence, a Human-Timelord Metacrisis, and there are still many unique tasks left undone. We Daleks were but the first, and far from the last._

DONNA

_Oi, you said that bit already! How about a new one for a change, like explaining if Time is so not done with me, then why am I locked up in a tiny room with a door that never opens and an echo as my only companion?_

VOICE

_Awaken my child, and know that for every end, there might also be another beginning. Your time is not done, for Time is not done with you. You are unique within all existence, a Human-Timelord Metacrisis, and there are still many unique tasks left undone. We Daleks were but the first, and far from the last._

**Donna rolls her eyes and ignores the voice, going back to trying the door knob again, hoping that this time, the three-thousand-four-hundred-and-fiftieth time, will be the charm. It is at times like these that one can only really begin to miss being a temp; at least the doors worked in Chiswick. The door knob wont turn, and so Donna is forced for the three-thousand-four-hundred-and-fiftieth time to go through a scant short-list of possibilities as to why and where she is, where she is. Most of those listings come back to one thing: the clinical definition of madness is to repeat the same task over and over again expecting a different result. **

DONNA

_Is it so much to bloody ask that when they make a bloody door, they make one that opens?_

**Donna wonders exactly who 'they' are not for the first nor the last time. It has long become a familiar habit of going through the motions, raging against a situation that is never changing. Lost and trapped in a small white room with only a never opening door and a warbling echo, a descent into madness and despair is assured, or would be, save for one thing. Never underestimate the sheer tenacity of a temp from Chiswick, especially one who possessed the sacred knowledge of the cosmos.**

**--**

DOCTOR (ranting)

_Remembering is... not what I, or one, wants to do. Yes, that's it! I got it Caan old buddy. Old buddy? Hello, Caan, you there Caan? Doctor paging Caan... hey wait, no that isn't right. I'm the Doctor, you should be paging me. Caan, come one Caan, page me. You know you want to, 'cause like I was in the Horse Head Nebula this one time, and there were these three really great looking Tarmagarions, and I was like... well you know, what with them and their sixteen mouths, I mean come on right, who wouldn't go and... well..._

**Ignoring his erstwhile companion, the Dalek has turned away from his observations of the Dragon's Eye, and is now looking back at the chaotic tangling mass of lights and colours above them. All those squiggling little bits vying for position and dominance, like feeding minoes in a tank, they are a swarm of living threads of time-tunnel trying to coalesce into a coherent pattern and failing miserably. As it ever has been, the Time Vortex is always in a state of flux, nary a constant to be seen in the entire mess. The Doctor appears to pause for breath, and then turns to look up at the Vortex along with the strange little Dalek, his eyes going wide as if it were his first time. Of course with a chaotic thing like a Time Vortex, always changing, every time is the first time, and the last. The Vortex is every time, and every time is different.**

DOCTOR

_You know Caan, looking up at that thing, the marvel of all Timelord marvels, it makes you wonder._

CAAN

_Wonder what exactly?_

DOCTOR

_How an artificially constructed network designed to link every point in space and time can possibly suffer from ADHD._

CAAN

_The extent of your diminished charms never ceases to amaze me, creature._

DOCTOR

_Creature? You forget, I'm the one who saves the universe time and time again. See it's even in my name, Time Lord. Get it, 'Time' Lord?_

CAAN

_And you wonder why I ignore you._

DOCTOR

_Augh, come on now, that's just rude, it's just you and me here old buddy, at the end of it all._

**Caan looks away from the Vortex to stare side-eyed at the queer phenomenon of Time that has produced this twisted ghost of the Doctor. Maybe it was sent here as his punishment for meddling with the time lines, then again maybe its just a product of the Dalek's own madness.**

CAAN (dubious)

_You do realize that this is not the end of it all, but actually the very beginning?_

DOCTOR (smug)

_Well now let's be fair old buddy, it was _a_ beginning, I'll give you that, but that beginning will be the end of it all just the same._

CAAN (returning the banter)

_Do my sensory nodes deceive me, or did you just make a valid point, creature._

DOCTOR (smiling wide)

_Hey now, I thought we'd established that I'm the hero, which makes you the creature._

CAAN (irritated again)

_Some might see it that way, but that would be a clear sign of derangement; you the hero? Bah!_

DOCTOR

_Now, that's just being mean, I didn't know an emotionless creature could be so petty._

CAAN

_Yes well, call it a gift from the Doctor._

DOCTOR

_Oh, well then, you're welcome._

CAAN

_Not you! The real doctor! Not some poor chrono-copy sent to me by a flaw in the space-time continuum._

DOCTOR

_If I'm so poor, then how come I've got all the Doctor's memories and smashing good looks, and all you've got is a pepper-pot?_

CAAN

_..._

**The Doctor who is not the Doctor grins widely.**

CAAN

_I hate you so much!_

**--**


	3. Chapter 2: A Door Opens

**It has been both hours and eternities for Donna, spent within the whiteroom, within that purgatory, and she has begun to develop an uneasy feeling (or at least a new and stronger uneasy feeling.) Donna was trying to wrench open the door, when she felt a tickle, just that lightest touch behind her, and then it was gone. Like the baby's breath on a spring breeze, a little tickle, like someone was there. Donna spins around, searching, looking at every corner and crevice of that room...**

DONNA

_Hey! Who's there?_

**...and finds nothing. Always the same emptiness, always the same square shape, and always the same sterile whiteness of that. But she knows that something was there, that something had to have been there, why would she imagine something as inconsequential as a touch of air?**

DONNA (reaching behind to touch the back of her neck)

_There was definitely something._

**Unconsciously Donna's hand begins to slide down from the back of her neck to the small of her back, it's as if, almost as if...**

DONNA

_No way!_

**Dread swells in her gut as an unwanted thought comes to her unbidden.**

DONNA (grasping blindly behind her)

_No! No, no, no!_

**There is a brief pause, and then a thump. Followed by another, and another, and another.**

DONNA (dread overwhelming her voice)

_Please, please, not again!_

**It's not her heart that's beating, but something behind her, directly behind her. And then there's a brilliant flash of light in front of her eyes, coming from a corner of the room.**

DONNA (Looking at the corner.)

_Who?_

**A figure in white appears in the once vacant corner.**

FIGURE (Pointing over Donna's shoulder)

_There's something on your back._

**--**

**A sentient glitch in time and his mad Dalek companion sit together in the dark, above an impossibly large Draconean eye, with the embodiment of the Time Vortex hovering up above them.**

DOCTOR (tapping the Dalek on his segmented brain canister.)

_So are you just going to stay there hating me, or should I find the fabulous miss Donna Noble on my own?_

CAAN (waving the chrono-copy away with a tentacle, staring upwards)

_Hush, something's happening with the Time Vortex, it's changing._

DOCTOR (bored)

_It's_ always _changing. That's why it's called timey wimey._

CAAN (scholarly)

_This is different, one of the few constants is changing, something's wrong._

DOCTOR (curious, looks up also)

_How wrong?_

**The broken pepper-pot shell slowly swivels towards the imitation Time-Lord.**

CAAN (A dangerous glint in his eye)

_Very, very wrong. I think, I think someone else is trying to find Donna Noble._

DOCTOR

_And?_

CAAN

_And they're succeeding._

DOCTOR

_Isn't that what we want?_

CAAN

_No. I mean yes, but not like this. It's not us._

**The Doctor paces around the Dalek considering.**

DOCTOR (touching his chin thoughtfully)

_You said that the universe would have need of the DoctorDonna again, why does it matter who finds her so long as she's found?_

CAAN (irritated)

_Because she's the key to it all, it all turns on her, she's the one, the Doctor in the Donna. _

**The Doctor stops his pacing and smiles at the diminutive destiny-maker.**

DOCTOR (amused)

_You know, for a Dalek, you talk an awful lot about keys and time, are you sure your not a Time Lord? If finding Donna is so important, why are we here anyway, at the Dragon's Eye; shouldn't we be off wherever the thing that's changing the constants in the Vortex is?_

CAAN (serious)

_We're here because I don't know where she is, I can follow her fragments but not her ghost, and that trail ends here, outside the Vortex, outside of Time Itself._

**Finally it seems the severity of the situation begins to sink in with the Doctor who is not the Doctor.**

DOCTOR

_So your saying this key, this Donna, is about to be found._

CAAN

_Yes._

DOCTOR

_But not by us._

CAAN

_Yes!_

DOCTOR

_And that's bad?_

CAAN

_Very bad!_

**--**

DONNA (still reaching behind her)

_I bloody well know there's something on my back! You, crazy flashing light man, how bout you stop standing there waving a finger at the problem, and actually try and fix the bloomin problem._

**The figure in white looks at his finger and blinks, staring at it curiously and then back at the loud woman who was shouting at him; he puts the finger away in his pocket, along with the rest of his hand.**

DONNA (exasperated)

_Well, don't just stand there, help get this thing off of me!_

FIGURE (sounding unsure)

_Well, er I augh, I suppose..._

DONNA

_You bloody well more than suppose. I'm bloody well standing here with a time-skewing beetle on my back and your supposing._

VOICE

_Awaken my child, and know that for every end, there might also be another beginning. Your time is not done, for Time is-_

DONNA

_Oi! No, don't you start too, I've had it enough with mysterious figures and voices appearing and disappearing. If someone doesn't do something about this right this-_

**The thumping is louder now, but also further away. Donna feels that sickly warm breath leave the back of her neck, it has long since stopped being pleasant like spring breezes. **

FIGURE (pulling the beetle off)

_There._

DONNA (relieved)

_Thank you._

**A distinct screeching of anger pierces the din, as the mewling and flailing beetle struggles impotently to reach back for it's former perch. The figure has it firmly by the shell, and at arms length away from his imperiously clean white suit.**

DONNA

_I thought I'd gotten rid of that bugger already, why is it back again?_

FIGURE

_Doubtlessly you did._

**The figure raises the grotesque creature into the air, and then throws it vehemently towards a wall with an intestinal-wrenching squelch. Dark beetle shell fragments and green grotesqueries ooze slowly down the once clean white wall. **

FIGURE

_Time Beetles are hive creatures by nature, where there's been one, there are bound to be others._

**About to wipe his hands (where he touched the beetle) off on his pale garments, the figure stops, as if thinking better of it, and puts them back in his pockets rather than spoiling the pallid attire.**

DONNA

_Great, just great, so much for a positive review. I can tell you that this place is getting a fail on its pest control._

**The figure looks confused again, about to say something, but quickly closing his mouth again, before at last finding the words.**

FIGURE (confused)

_Review? You do know this is not a hotel right? You're trapped in the abstract, none of this is exactly real._

DONNA

_Really, and here I was just about to order room service and dine in with a pay-TV movie?_

**Mouth hanging open before closing again, the figure looks around at the empty white room (avoiding looking at the shambled corpse) and then back at the fiery redhead.**

FIGURE (still confused)

_But er, there's nothing here, it's empty, completely and utterly..._

**Donna stares disbelievingly at the figure in white for a long moment till the newcomer trails off.**

FIGURE (slowly gets it)

_You're being, augh... sarcastic with me?_

DONNA

_Bingo! Give the man a medal and tell him what he's won._

**A pained expression crosses the figure's face, and he looks almost as if he is about to begin regretting showing up.**

DONNA

_Oh, relax, don't be such a sensitive Charlie._

FIGURE

_My name's not Charlie, it's-_

DONNA

_Hey, what are you exactly, are you like a guardian angel or something? Cause I got to say, I really needed one about now, I thought I'd gone off my rocker once I heard that pounding heart again._

FIGURE

_I'm not an angel._

DONNA

_No? A pity, I'd rather liked you as an angel, all innocent and easily bothered._

FIGURE (going flushed at the neck)

_I.. I... I..._

DONNA

_Listen Chuckie boy, can we get out of here, you know I'd love to stay, but I really should be going, let's get out however you got in._

FIGURE

_That's not possible, it's a one way trip. _

DONNA

_What! So you're telling me that not only was I trapped with an echo and a broken door before, but now I have to share these tiny accommodations with mister sensitive and him?_

**Donna gestures towards the puddling beetle bits.**

DONNA (clearly aggravated)

_All I want is a way out of here, or someone to get me out. Is that so much to ask? One little working door, or a knight in shining armour, (or that Jack Harkness,) is all I want; yet all I get is you. You, with your silly little white suit, you, who looks little more than a boy grown, do you even have to shave yet? How is this fair? All I wanted was a way out, not a kid and an un-opening door._

**Looking embarrassed, 'Chuck' unconsciously raises a hand to his face and then, catching himself doing it, quickly snatches it back down, determined not to check his face for stubble. He doesn't actually look that young, he's at least twenty-something thinks Donna, but certainly baby faced, who is currently venting frustration.**

FIGURE

_If the door won't open, have you tried asking it?_

DONNA

_What?_

FIGURE

_The door. Have you tried asking it nicely?_

DONNA

_What?!_

FIGURE

_Ask the door to open for you._

DONNA

_Are you telling me that I've been trapped here for what feels like a bloody eternity, and all I had to do was ask the bloody door to bloody well open for me?_

FIGURE

_Nicely._

DONNA

_What?_

FIGURE

_Ask the door, nicely. You're saying you've been trapped here for an eternity and you've never once tried simply asking to be let out, politely?_

**Donna's face began to match the colouring of her hair at that remark.**

DONNA

_Oh be quiet, c'mon._

**She grabs the figure by the hand, and pushes him up to the door. **

DONNA (encouraging)

_Well? Go on!_

FIGURE (facing the door unsure)

_Well, er augh, door, ser. Could you possibly, augh, maybe, open up for us. Please?_

**A second passes, and then another, and another. Donna appears about to say something more, a look of frustrated triumph on her face when there is a loud hissing and then a creak. It's like the hiss of equilibrium when two air-locks meet between vessels, and the creak of a vary old door on rusty hinges. The door swings outward revealing what lies beyond.**

DONNA

_Blimey!_

**--**


	4. Chapter 3: Redflower

**Realisations and then resolutions come to the Dalek and the Doctor, as they hunker above the weeping wound in the side of the universe; the Dragon's Eye.**

DOCTOR (curious)

_How bad is 'very bad?'_

CAAN (considering)

_You remember all that mischief you got up to before?_

DOCTOR (looking rather unsettled)

_Which never happened._

CAAN (staring intently)

_Which never happened because I undid those timelines, yes that mischief._

**A look of something that could have been shame or something else passes over the Doctor who is not the Doctor's face.**

DOCTOR (somber)

_Yes, I remember._

CAAN

_Well, everyone else is going to start remembering too._

**The Doctor visibly goes a shade or three paler.**

DOCTOR (childlike dread)

_But what I've done..._

CAAN

_But not just what you've done, they will remember all-things, every thing real and imagined._

**A sad and weary look crosses the copy's face as he realises the full temerity of what the Dalek is implying.**

DOCTOR (grim)

_That's it then, we have lost._

**The imitation Doctor's implied 'we' being everyone in existence losing. However, the little mad Dalek offers a shred of scant, bitter hope.**

CAAN (reproachful)

_Cheer up, we still have to track down the late Dr. Donna Noble, irregardless of the circumstance. After all, we haven't lost per say..._

**The Doctor looks up, hoping and expectant for some miracle words from this tentacled sage of space-time.**

CAAN (wry)

_...We're only losing._

**The sound of maddening mechanical laughter drifts off towards the Dragon's Eye as the gathered vestiges of the Dalek's sanity slips away.**

**--**

**A door opens and reveals a bright light beyond, it's both exhilarating and blinding in it's luminosity. **

DONNA (reacting to the brightness)

_Blimey!_

**There is an audible, albeit uncomfortable clearing of the throat, as the figure in white steps forward, taking the loud redhead forward by the hand that still grasps his.**

FIGURE (hesitant)

_Come. Look. See._

DONNA (alarmed)

_Oh. My. God._

**As the two cross the threshold and leave the square room behind them, the light is no longer blinding, it's... normal!**

FIGURE (reciting)

_I wouldn't know about that, but a polyphotic differential is to be expected with trans-extant travel. People are always finding lights at the end of their tunnels, but that's because the nature of 'light' is different to each plane of existence. When you become a part of that existence, light becomes 'normal' for you, and you see it as inhabitants of the plane see it._

DONNA (agitated)

_Bloody hell!_

**Regardless of the figure in white's technobabble, as their eyes have adjusted to new light, they find that beyond the door is...**

DONNA

_Blimey, it's another bloody door!_

**As Donna Noble is so libel to eloquently put it in her state of surprised annoyance, beyond the door is another door. Many in fact. The two appear to be in a long white hallway filled with many white doors, stretching in either direction as far as their eyes could see.**

FIGURE (soft spoken)

_Um, er, there's more than one door, you know._

DONNA

_I can see there's more than one door, Charlie man. That's not the point, the point that there's even one more door is one too many, never mind the rest of these blasted doors._

**The figure in white, or 'Chuck,' is caught up by the fact that he's a 'Charlie man' again and not a 'Charlie boy,' and forgets to try and correct the fiery redhead about his name. Chuck's as good a name as any other, names meaning very little in his line of work at the very least.**

CHUCK

_Doors, rooms, and hallways are quite natural for this part of the abstract. It's one of the easiest ways of understanding it._

DONNA (still annoyed)

_Great... I lose one blathering nut, (albeit a wonderful and brilliant nut,) only just in time to find another. _

**The figure in white, the newly christened 'Chuck,' looks crestfallen, taking the wily woman's words a little too close to heart.**

DONNA

_Oh relax, I don't mind that much, not really. I've got at least as bad a blathering running around my head, several in fact. _

**Chuck starts to look a little better.**

CHUCK

_Really?_

DONNA

_Yeah. Thankfully they each drown the rest out, little more than a muddled buzzing now, leaving me with some sense of peace. And truly, I don't mind the company. Still better than being trapped._

**The figure seems to relax, enough to crack a tentative smile.**

CHUCK (nodding)

_Better company too; company that can even open doors._

**Donna laughs out loud at the last, starting to gain a shine for this odd but enlightening lad.**

DONNA

_Did you just crack a joke there? There might be some hope for you yet Chuckie._

**'Chuck' says nothing but offers a shy smile, pleased with himself. This Donna Noble is different than anyone he's ever met, but he thinks that he likes it that way, even if it will take a lot of getting used to.**

**--**

**There is the calamitous braying of sonic gunfire, angry red sound waves lashing into the side of an old communications building. A fractured city scape is sprawled across the pockmarked face of Old 'New Earth.' Detonation sites being behind those 'pock marks' as likely a guess as any, and a more likely guess than many. A young recruit and a grizzled old veteran are pinned down against a wall, using it for cover against the lethal braying barrage.**

VETERAN

_How much charge you got left in that blaster ah yours, child?_

RECRUIT

_I'm not a child! I stopped being a child when the red bastards got June!_

VETERAN

_All right kid, settle down, I see your point. Still, how many shots?_

**The former child looks resigned, and remains silent.**

VETERAN

_How many!_

RECRUIT

_Six! All right, I've got just six damned shots left._

VETERAN

_Six, eh? An unlucky number, we might have made it with seven, but six?_

RECRUIT (giving a knowing look)

_Come off it old man._

VETERAN (considering)

_All right, I guess you really aren't a kid, child. Six or seven, makes no lick ah difference gainst the likes ah dem._

RECRUIT

_So what do we do?_

VETERAN

_Innit obvious? Taint nothing else ta do, we keep fighting, die like men, least ways all we can do._

**A resounding sonic boom like the braying laughter of a thousand red donkeys hammers into the side of the remnant communications building.**

RECRUIT (rueful)

_Die like men? Ha. No one dies like men with the red dogs. Even I know that. Looks like they've gotten tired of trading shots with us and brought in the cannoneers._

VETERAN (wry)

_Heh, guess you're right, girly. Still, let an old man hope, rather go down blazing with a blaster in my hand then in a red bastard's breeding pit._

**The grizzled old veteran of the Time Agency says this last wish, well knowing that the 'red dogs' will only disable their motor-functions, leaving them immobile, but still very able to be taken by the 'red bastards.'**

RECRUIT

_I just wish Junius was with us, so I could see him one last time._

VETERAN

_So do I, kid, so do I._

RECRUIT

_We're almost out of blaster charges, do you think for once in your miserable old life you could use my real name?_

VETERAN

_If you like. But only if you call me-_

**The sound of thumping boots in formation echoes round the corner, as the 'dogs' are now marching down on them after the cannon fire.**

VETERAN (determined)

_Ready, Julia?_

RECRUIT (blinks at the sound of her name)

_Ready!_

**Six shots to make a stand with, plus four more charges in the old soldier's blaster. They are, barring perhaps one other, the last of their unit, sent to Old 'New Earth' to stop the Crimson from ever happening, here where it all begins.**

RECRUIT (shouting a battle cry)

_For June!_

VETERAN (echoing the girl quietly)

_For June._

**They shout and mutter respectively as they pop around the corner, blasters screaming death upon the enemy. Once, twice, thrice, four, five, six, seven, eight... Eight times those blasters scream out death, felling an incoming marcher with each. Eight out of ten shots fired, eight out of a hundred 'red bastards' killed. The veteran has saved his last two shots.**

VETERAN (whispering)

_I'm satisfied with dying as an August, if only because I cant die as a man with a blaster in hand._

RECRUIT (missing the words)

_What?_

**The veteran has saved his last two shots. The 'red bastards' sonic barrage disables motor-function only, the Crimson take their prey alive. One. Two. The Veteran's last two shots are fired, but no more marchers are downed.**

**--**

DOCTOR

_I'd say don't laugh, it cant be as terrible as your laughing makes it out to be, old buddy. But then if we're dealing with what your implying, then it's worse then your laughing you possibly ever underline; and that's saying a lot, because you are an atrocious laugher._

CAAN

_I don't know whether to be pleased or insulted, creature. Not that it matters. There is still a chance that it might all come right in the end, if we find the Doctor Donna. Barring that..._

DOCTOR

_Barring that we're more doomed than a Time Agent trapped at the end of the Fifty-second century..._

**The Doctor trails off and the Dalek stares at the chrono-copy queerly.**

CAAN (edgy)

_What did you say that for? Nothing happens at the end of the Fifty-second century, the Time Agency is disbanded in the Fifty-first anyway. I changed the timelines, I made sure that the Crimson never happens. You never burned New Earth, you never stole the Rod of Suns, and you never gave the Neos the Paradigm._

DOCTOR (staring)

_Oh, dear._

CAAN

_Hmmm?_

DOCTOR (clearly looking back at the Vortex, at the representation above them for all of Time and Space)

_It's the changing Constant, it's... rippling._

CAAN (now looking up)

_By Davros, it's not rippling, it's bleeding! It's bleeding!_

**The universal Constant, that part of the ever-changing Vortex that never changes (like how pencils never fall up, why the good guys get to win Armageddon, and why the Doctor is always British) was changing. Not only that, but it was causing a ripple across the Vortex. All the timey-wimey bits around the piece that represented the Constant were rippling outwards in a uniform pattern. But it was more than that, all those rippling bits, they were all the same colour, the crimson of blood. It looked exactly like when someone wearing a white shirt is shot in the chest, the telltale redflower appears. Well the Time Vortex, that Time-Lord marvel connected to virtually ever bit of space and time, was actually suffering a redflower. What was done had become undone, dark destinies averted were seeing the new timelines reverted.**


	5. Chapter 4: Time Mix

**As the view turned away from the Dalek and the Timelord, it zoomed up towards the redflower, that crimson blossom in the Vortex which was seeping into all those other 'timey wimey' bits. One bit was of particular interest, once humming between a half hundred colours, this particular bit of living time is stained crimson. The timeline has changed. Narrowing the view, we pass through into this particular piece of space-time, and into a Cardiff bar. Jack Harkness and John Hart come crashing through a glass door. They stand, draw their guns and point them at each other's heads. A song ends, as a bloodier one begins.**

JOHN (circling Jack)

_You're putting on weight?_

JACK (circling John)

_You're losing your hair!_

JOHN

_What are you wearing?_

JACK

_Captain Jack Harkness, note the stripes._

JOHN

_Captain John Hart, note the sarcasm._

JACK

_Hey, I worked my way up through the ranks._

JOHN (feigns panting)

_I bet the ranks were very grateful. I need a drink._

JACK

_I thought you'd never ask._

**They both settle down at the counter, John hands Jack a bottle, and grabs another for himself.**

JACK

_So er, how was rehab?_

JOHN (guzzling down the bottle)

_Rehabs. Plural._

JACK

_Drink, drugs, sex and..._

JOHN

_Murder._

JACK

_Aha ha! You went to murder rehab?_

JOHN

_I know, ridiculous. The odd kill, who does it hurt?_

JACK

_You clean now?_

JOHN

_Yeah, kicked everything. Living like a priest._

JACK (laughs, puts down the bottle.)

_So, how's the Time Agency?_

JOHN

_You didn't hear? It's, ah, shut down._

JACK

_You're kidding._

JOHN

_No. There's only seven of us left now._

JACK

_Wow._

JOHN

_It's good to see you. It was never the same without you._

**Jack leans in, as if to kiss him.**

JACK (whispers)

_You need to go. I don't want you on my territory._

JOHN (standing up, puts bottle down)

_What? Time was you couldn't get enough of me on your "territory". _

**A sudden noise of others advancing on the two; both are reaching for their pieces.**

JOHN (grabs his gun and shoots both doors)

_All right, everybody out!_

**Several people filter in from both doors, only it's not just Torchwood operatives. It's... Gray, hands pressed over his ears. The Torchwood team seems entranced, entering the room like drones.**

JOHN (surprised)

_What are you doing here Gray, was this part of your plan?_

JACK (memory-struck, lowers his gun slightly)

_Gray?! Is that you? Oh my god, you're alive. Aha, you're alive!_

GRAY (silent)

_..._

**Or at least it was part of Gray that entered the room. Those hands held firmly over the ears were not exactly masculine, neither was the body that those arms were attached to, both rather overtly feminine upon closer inspection.**

NOT-GRAY

_Sorry to disappoint, but that's a no; to both of you._

**Gray wasn't standing there covering his own ears, it was actually someone just holding his severed head up in front of their face; a face, which was now revealed, revealed as the head was carelessly slung into the crook of an elbow, like a motorcycle helmet placed on a hip. The face was distinctly familiar.**

JACK

_Gaheris!_

JOHN

_Bloody Hell!_

GAHERIS (smiling amusedly)

_'Bloody head' more like; Hart is it now? And of course we know the infamous Harkness._

**John is not a small person, and Jack is even taller, but the woman, this 'Gaheris', stood well above both of them by several centimetres. Her mass of curls were a vivid shade of scarlet, as were her sharp almond eyes (though, those were darker, almost black to the point of dried blood.) She stroked the severed head of Gray almost thoughtfully, as she looked the two men up and down, a glint of fond remembrance in those serrated scarlet eyes.**

GAHERIS

_And that would be Commander Gaheris to you now, my dear captains._

JOHN

_Commander of what, ashes? The Time Agency's gone._

GAHERIS

_Not exactly, as you so simply put it, there were still seven of us left._

**There was a sly glint to Gaheris' scarlet eyes as she brought her lithe fingers up to her heart-shaped face, sniffing delicately so as to inhale off the heady scent of death and decay.**

JOHN

_That's just wrong... Wait, what do you mean 'were?'_

GAHERIS (smiling again)

_Well there was seven of us, but now there's only three; and that's not even including the director._

JOHN

_Then, that leaves just us; not including the director; meaning Harmond's still alive._

GAHERIS

_Well no. I put the bullet in his temple myself._

JOHN

_You said you weren't including the director._

GAHERIS (laughing merrily)

_And I didn't, otherwise I would have said 'were eight,' instead of seven._

**An audible gun-click interrupts the laughter, and indicates that the third of their number has had quite enough of their discourse. **

JACK (pointing a gun at Gaheris in addition to the one he has fixed on John)

_Enough! I don't know what the fuck you two are up to, but it ends now. You've killed enough people today. You'll pay for Gray and Harmond, but first, what have you done to my team?_

JOHN (edgy)

_Woah, settle down there cowboy. I'm just as surprised as you to find the Red Bitch with us again._

**Gaheris makes a tutt-tutt noise in her throat at the sound of her informal title.**

JOHN (continuing)

_And I know you might not want to hear this, but, I'm the victim here. You don't realize. Actions, ramifications, ripples in the pond. It's beyond my control._

JACK

_Beyond your control? Please!_

JOHN (fingering open his wrist-manipulator)

_Look at it! Go on. It's bonded to my skin. I can't get it off._

**Jack looks at John's wrist manipulator**

JACK

_Whoa._

JOHN

_Ninth generation detonator._

JACK (steps back warily, eyeing the detonator and Gaheris)

_You're a walking bomb!_

JOHN

_Add to that a surveillance circuit, to monitor my every word and action, and Gray had me doing anything I'm told. Cos if I don't... boom! I'm not my own man. _

JACK

_Oh, please, that is the oldest trick in the book._

GAHERIS (tossing the severed head at Jack before rolling behind a wall)

_No, this is!_

**Jack on reflex holsters a gun and reaches out to catch his brother's head. John takes the opportunity to snag Jack's other arm, simultaneously disarming and subduing him.**

JACK (pinned and bitter)

_Heh, some victim._

JOHN (pinning and looking unhappy)

_I'm sorry. It can't be helped, I-_

JACK

_Save it!_

GAHERIS

_Oh how sad, a lovers' quarrel, and all because of me._

**Gaheris slowly steps out from around the corner where she took cover, her hand upon what appears to be a vortex-manipulator of her own; two of them even.**

JACK

_How could you do it, how could you work with her?_

JOHN

_I-_

GAHERIS

_Enough chit, chat. Now I'll overlook the name calling and pointless male jockeying for my attention, but I've had quite enough of your two voices for now. Both of you still may be of some use to the Agency, time to own up to those pledges of duty and loyalty you swore when you joined. As the sole remaining Time Officer in the universe, I'm taking you two little lost agents home._

**Gaheris began fingering in coordinates on her two wrist-strapped vortex-manipulators, and soon there was a flash of light thrice over, each respective to a Time Agent as they left the Twenty-First century, and headed for the end of the Fifty-first, under Gaheris' apparent machinations; leaving several dazed and confused Torchwood members behind in their wake, the mind-sync wearing off without a Time Agent near them to maintain it.**

**--**

**Meanwhile, in a hallway in the abstract realm of non-existence, we return to the DoctorDonna and the figure in white: the Chuckie boy. Both are studying the door to the room that they have just left, for on the outside is writ the words in big block letters: Banned Loon.**

DONNA (eye twitching)

_Oi, that's a right bit flattering lot to put on a door with me behind it._

CHUCK (thinking)

_I don't think it means what it appears to mean. _

DONNA (shouting)

_Of course it doesn't, it's rubbish. Do I look like a right loon to you?_

**The figure in white opens his mouth to answer, then snaps his jaws shut, realising what he is about to say. Chuck seems to be suffering to find the right words, and ends up taking too long to answer. He realises this and he flushes about the neck and ears.**

DONNA

_Oh bullocks, we're back to this again._

**Chuck remains silent.**

DONNA

_Ok then, how about something you can answer. Where are we?_

**At last the figure seems to edge up, something he's better at dealing with. Non-social facts.**

CHUCK

_We're in the abstract. I said that already._

DONNA (frustrated)

_That's not an answer, you might as well say I don't know._

CHUCK

_No, that's not fair, it's... erm._

DONNA

_Listen up, Charlie man, I may not be able to comprehend all of the stuff locked up in me head, but I know enough to sense when something's rubbish. I told you I wanted to get back home, to get out of wherever here is. You say we can't go back, and I get that bit about not being able to be un-imagined, but it sounds more to me like you have memorised a bunch of stuff, but you don't understand any of it. Not really._

**At this point, rather than being down-trodden, there was an actual heat in the figure's soft grey eyes, something like the confidence in reciting what he knew. Defending that knowing was stemming from the same source.**

CHUCK

_I do so understand, I understand that I'm here, in this place. I understand that the here is not exactly reality as we know it. This is not a region of the known-universe. You cannot get here through a time-vortex. I understand that I had to become unreal to get here, Donna Noble. And I understand enough of what you are and why I'm here that you _had_ to be found._

**Donna seems on the cusp of a tart retort, but holds back at the last, seeing the state of the figure rather than just reacting. It's as if something from within, something Doctorish has reached out and stilled her tongue. It's reaching out from within her, making her quiet so that she might hear... What? Hear What? Donna looks around dazed for a moment, and just then a series of memories from out of the past pulse back to her unbidden.**

**--**

**Donna and the New Doctor stand in the TARDIS, the latter has just finished regenerating.**

DONNA

_But why me?_

NEW DOCTOR (like it's obvious)

_Cos you're special._

DONNA

_Oh, I keep telling you, I'm not!_

NEW DOCTOR (looking at her as if he's just understanding)

_No, but you are. Oh. You really don't believe that, do you? I can see, Donna... what you're thinking. All that attitude. All that lip. Cos all this time... you think you're not worth it._

DONNA

_Stop it!_

NEW DOCTOR

_Shouting at the world, cos no-one's listening. Well... why should they?_

DONNA

_Doctor. Stop it._

NEW DOCTOR (proudly)

_But look at what you did! _

**The new Doctor thinks for a moment.**

NEW DOCTOR

_No, it's more than that, it's like... we were always heading for this._

**Flashback: Donna appearing in the TARDIS on her wedding day.**

NEW DOCTOR

_You came to the TARDIS._

**Another flashback: seeing each other in the Adipose building.**

NEW DOCTOR (voice over)

_And you found me again._

**Flashback: Wilf saluting the Doctor during Voyage of the Damned.**

NEW DOCTOR (voice over)

_Your granddad._

**Flashback: Donna opening the boot of her car, parked near the TARDIS.**

NEW DOCTOR (voice over)

_Your car!_

**Flashbacks end.**

NEW DOCTOR

_Donna, your car, you-you parked your car right where the TARDIS was gonna land, that's not coincidence at all! We've been blind. Something's been drawing us together for such a long time._

DONNA

_But you're talking, like... destiny. There's no such thing, is there?_

NEW DOCTOR

_It's still not finished. It's like... the pattern's not complete, the strands are still drawing together. But heading for what?_

**There is a wining sound coming from the central control column. Donna and the new Doctor move to observe it.**

NEW DOCTOR

_Oh, clever._

DONNA

_What?_

NEW DOCTOR

_Very clever indeed._

DONNA

_Doctor!_

NEW DOCTOR

_Donna, listen to me very carefully. Someone's been skewing the timelines._

DONNA

_What does that mean?_

NEW DOCTOR

_The Vortex has been manipulated, that which is linked to all of time and space. The TARDIS hasn't been able to pick it up till now, but now that we're in the Medusa Cascade, phased out of sync with normal reality, it's all become obvious. The TARDIS can sense it now._

DONNA

_Like finding your shadow when you step into a lit room from out of a darkened corridor?_

NEW DOCTOR

_Exactly! The Vortex doesn't touch this place, it's not connected to normal space-time, hence being out of sync. Outside the Vortex, we can read the Vortex objectively. However, the TARDIS shouldn't have even been able to reach here, since it only travels _through _the Vortex._

DONNA

_So then how did we get here, I thought we just followed the signal?_

NEW DOCTOR

_We did, but that wouldn't have been enough on it's own. Once these areas are sealed off, these pockets of unique space-time, they are essentially time-locked, the natural rules of the Vortex prevent us from reaching here... unless someone bent the rules._

DONNA

_Like who or whatever's been guiding our destinies for us?_

NEW DOCTOR

_Exactly._

DONNA

_So what do we do now that the TARDIS can sense the meddling?_

NEW DOCTOR

_Well, ugh, we don't do anything. Whoever has been influencing events has led us this far, we'll do whatever we can, and let them do whatever they can, and we'll see what happens._

DONNA

_But I thought we were beyond the Vortex, how can anyone still meddle?_

NEW DOCTOR

_Oh, Donna. Just because we're in a place that we can sense the meddling of the timelines in normal space-time, doesn't mean there isn't any meddling here. In fact, it should be easier here, lot less bits of stuff to manage. All of existence versus a little pocket realm, which is simpler?_

DONNA

_So it's easier for our fates to be manipulated here?_

NEW DOCTOR

_Yup._

DONNA

_And because we're here and not in normal reality, we have no way of detecting these manipulations here, just like we cant sense the manipulations in normal reality, when we're in that normal reality._

NEW DOCTOR

_Yup._

DONNA (sarcastic)

_Stellar._

**--**

**Donna now has a hand placed firmly on her forehead, leaning against a white wall, heaving a sigh as the assailing visions leave her.**

CHUCK

_Are you all right?_

DONNA

_Do I look all right?_

CHUCK (reddens)

...

DONNA

_Ugh, nevermind suit-boy. It's gone now, whatever it was._

CHUCK

_I'm glad._

DONNA

_I am too. Now, let's move on, I'm tired of all this white, reminds me too much of my wedding._

CHUCK (alarmed)

_You're married?!_

DONNA (amused but weary)

_Yes. No. Both. Was married, kinda, real nice bloke, tried to feed me to a Racnoss._

CHUCK

_Hrm, that bit isn't in the histories._

DONNA

_Histories? So you're... No, nevermind, I said I didn't want to know, I just wanted to get out, and I meant it._

CHUCK

_Sigh, fair enough. Well we can't go back, so we may have to go forward. But..._

**The figure looks left and then right, before looking back at the door with the writing on it.**

CHUCK

_Banned Loon. Hmmm._

DONNA

_Oi, leave off, eh. _

CHUCK

_Banned Loon, Donna Noble. _

DONNA

_I said leave off!_

CHUCK

_Donna Noble, Banned Loon. Banned Loon, Donna Noble._

DONNA

_That's it, one more time and we'll see whose going to be _banned_._

CHUCK (sighing)

_No, that's not what I meant, it's like... Well, I think it's an anagram._

**There is a distinct twitch to Donna's eye again as she gets what he is (or at least trying to) say.**

DONNA

_The letters in_ my _name, scrambled up are what's written on that door?_

CHUCK

_As best as I can tell, yes. Banned Loon is an anagram of Donna Noble._

**Donna is wearing a brittle smile at this realization.**

DONNA

_Someone's got a cruel mind for labelling doors._

CHUCK (surprised)

_Really? It makes sense doesn't it, though, writing your name on the door that you're behind?_

DONNA

_No, it does not. And no, that is not my name on the door._

CHUCK

_Well, I admit, it's a bit unnecessarily elaborate. But Banned Loon, Donna Noble, it's still about the same._

**Donna starts to glare at the figure, but then gives up rolling her eyes when she sees that lost look on his face again. Some people in this world just don't get it.**

DONNA (grabbing the figure by the arm and dragging him along)

_Nevermind, off we go._

CHUCK

_Hey, wait, where are we going? I hadn't finished with that._

DONNA

_We're going right, and yes you have!_

CHUCK

_Why right?_

DONNA

_Figure it out._

**As Chuck was being pulled along, his brows were knit in thought; only able to grasp at, 'cos it's the right way?' After several metres lost in thought, Chuck notices more writing in the halls. Rather, there are many doors in this very long and pale hallway. He sees 'A Flasher Mottle,' 'Erst, I Sin,' and 'I, Anther.' Looking over his shoulder to the other wall reveals: 'Whither Face,' 'Both Flawed,' 'Irish Quotient' and 'Hem Knot.' Chuck is just about to protest their leavings because he wants to examine opposing doors labelled 'A Vandal Armorer Untrod,' and 'I, Sum Orb,' when he hears it again. The thumping, it's the heartlike thumping of the Drones.** **The thumping begins again, this time even he can feel it. Thump. Thump. Thump.**

**--**

DOCTOR

_How does a Vortex bleed?_

CAAN

_Like that!_

**Caan raises his tentacle and points back at the Vortex.**

DOCTOR

_No, I get that bit, and I have most of the Doctor's memories in me, one way or another, but there's nothing about bleeding Vortices._

CAAN

_Not that kind of bleeding. It's the timelines, they are all bleeding into eachother. _

DOCTOR

_Oh! That's brilliant. The Vortex is often like a maddeningly awesome painting; real art. Confusing as all-get-out mind you, but still all so alive and vibrant. But now the Vortex, it's colours have been washed out, there's a blurring, the colours and pieces are running together._

CAAN

_Precisely. The colours are bleeding together, leaving only that heinous crimson splotch. Mixed Time._

DOCTOR

_Oh, I'm good, very good._

CAAN

_What? How are you good? I'm the one who fell through time, saw it all._

DOCTOR

_Yeah well, only cause I made you do it._

CAAN

_So the worlds, nigh, the universe is about to end (again) and you are blithing over who get's credit for figuring out that it is ending (again?)_

DOCTOR

_Well... yeah, that about sums it up old buddy. I mean we Doctors did most of the work, the sketching and colouring if you will. While you, well you're just a tracer._

CAAN

_Explain._

DOCTOR

_You know, like you have the simple task of outlining things, while we did the rest. And I might add, we did a smashing job of it._

CAAN

_By altering the timelines, I've saved the universe from a half hundred dire destinies. What have you done?_

DOCTOR (wearing a smug grin)

_Let's see, ten incarnations, saving trillions of people in trillions of times, gee, how can that possibly compare to you. _

CAAN

_No, that was the_ real_ Doctor. What have _you_ done?_

DOCTOR (grinning madly)

_Well, now me, since anything I did was erased when you changed the timelines, all I've done is survive spending a great deal of time with you old buddy. My sole companion is one mad little Dalek, who just might have mucked up all the universe in trying to save it, and I don't even get to travel anywhere else beyond this fetid purgatory. Face it, Caan, compared to you and the 'real' Doctor, I'm a hero. I deserve a medal or something, maybe I should petition the Crystal Guardian._

CAAN (rubbing his little Dalek temple with a little Dalek tentacle)

_And to think you, _you_, who used to be known as the Dark Doctor; that you, who of all people was feared across eons and cosmoses for your _mercy_; and that you who was the Good Doctor, with the Good Medicine which saw a million worlds cauterised; you, who now sits here (a temporal shadow of a future that never was, having found laughter again somewhere along the way,) was all this, and now all you can do is prattle._

DOCTOR

_Beautiful isn't it? Redemption can be found for us all Caan, it's what I'd forgotten. 'Sides, could be worse, I could be prattling _about _me prattling., 'course _who_ would ever do that?_

**The Doctor who is not the Doctor grins at the Dalek, knowing that he's won this round. However, for knowing all that, he is still not in the knowing for that even as the ugly crimson flower blazes overhead in the Vortex, several smaller crimson blooms appear behind the Doctor and the Dalek. Those blooms are the mark of red-shifts (transdimensional travel technology powered by ultrared wavelengths or UR-T****3****s.) Something new had come to the outer rim of the Dragon's eye, and it was using technology thought extinct in the Time War.**

**--**


	6. Chapter 5: Advance

CAAN (resolute)

_Prattling aside, it would seem to me that even here, at the Dragon's Eye, the DoctorDonna cannot be found. I was sure this of all places, would allow me contact._

DOCTOR (thinking of something)

_Well reality is certainly thin here, almost non-existent. But, are you sure you're going about it the right way, Caan old buddy?_

CAAN

What do you mean?

DOCTOR (vague sounding)

_Well, seems to me that reality is thin here, but it's _still_ here. Maybe, rather than using this place as a door (because we know that went over so well in the beginning,) we should try using it as a window._

CAAN

_As in, reality: not thin enough to break, but still thin enough to see through._

DOCTOR

_Exactly. Brilliant aren't I._

CAAN

_Oh, you're something all right. Brilliance wouldn't be the word for it though._

DOCTOR

_Hey now, let's not get all sidetracked with what I may or may not allegedly be. _

CAAN

_Not focus on you? That would be a change._

**A sad and struck face stretches across the pseudo-Doctor's visage.**

DOCTOR (wearing a hurt look)

_That cuts deep, it really does. _

**Of course, the Doctor who is not the Doctor, being who he is, cannot hold this feigned look for long and it snaps right back into a grin.**

DOCTOR (grinning)

_Mind you, considering how dull you are my Dalek friend, I'd be surprised if you could wound anyone. _

CAAN (gesturing with an idle tentacle)

_Maybe so, but even a dull blade has a point. Where as where your supposed rapier wit is concerned... well, let's just say I never have fear of you splitting my sides with laughter._

**The next moment stretches out with the Doctor wearing a restrained look on his face.**

DOCTOR (restraint failing)

_Touché._

**There is a distinct sound of a tentacle slapping against whatever the Dalek equivalent of a forehead might be, at this resounding cliché.**

DOCTOR (musing)

_Is that a point to you or a point to me? I'd say you'd won, but with this last-_

CAAN (somber)

_It doesn't matter, whosoever point it was, it had best have been a short one. We have company._

**One flare of dark red light after another went off, but not just in random intervals, no. These flashes were orderly, one after the other in clear and concise lines. These weren't just a few redshifts, these were many, and they were arrayed in the rank and file symmetry of an army, an invading army.**

**--**

**A sound of pounding, and the figure in white stops dead, spinning round towards the way from which they had come, feeling the guiding hand on his wrist dig deep. That the redhead was strong was no doubt, but that sensation didn't matter, not with the feeling of pitted emptiness taking hold of his lower gut.**

CHUCK (expecting the skittering and scurrying of temporal scavengers)

_..._

**Instead of a swarm, there was... nothing. The hallway behind them was empty, not a single thorax or carapace to be seen; and yet... And yet there had been that sound, the thumping like that of many hearts, the ominous cardiac tremolo of many creatures.**

CHUCK (sighing with relief)

_Few, well that was a close thing._

DONNA

_...chirrup..._

CHUCK (confused)

_What?_

DONNA

_...chirrup..._

CHUCK (surmising)

_Oh; the fright gave you the hiccoughs did it, miss Noble?_

DONNA (silent)

_..._

CHUCK (worried)

_Miss Noble?_

**'Chuck' realises that the grip on his wrist hasn't lessoned any, if anything it was stronger now; far stronger. The figure in white stops gazing over at the rear of the hallway, stops scanning over the anagram-labelled doors, and slowly, ever so tentatively looks back towards the fore and the friend.**

CHUCK

_Donna?_

**'Donna' he says half-heartedly, but the thing now standing there holding him is not Donna Noble; oh no. It's taller, darker, and has two too-many limbs for that. If what they had encountered before was a mere scavenger, a scout before the swarm, this... this thing was a predator, the true hunter for that swarm.**

CHUCK

_Oh, dear._

**Standing close to two-metres in height, or near-on six-foot-six at the horned-top of its burnished black beetle shell; it stood erect on reverse-bending legs, extra segments in each. The head, which was low and bent, was fixed with heavy horned-mandibles and swishing attennae, attennae flung about like flails in the hands of some careless Roman centurion in ages past. It was almost comically like some insectoid parody of a Judoon, the way it wore itself in a heavy armoured carapace and a gargantuan head reminiscent of some terrestrial rhinoceros beetle; only now no one was laughing at this lethal parody.**

BEETLE (not actually Donna)

_...chirrup..._

CHUCK (nervous ranting)

_Augh, I don't know exactly what you are, although I can guess, but maybe, oh I don't know, if it's not too much trouble, could you sorta, maybe, possibly release my arm? It's starting to hurt._

**Not only was the thing not funny, it was down right unnerving. However, it was not that it was **_**so**_** beetle-like that made it unnerving, it was the fact that it was so **_**inhuman**_**. 'Chuck' was hard pressed to put a finger on what unnerved him the most, but he knew what was giving him the queasy feeling in his gut, where was Donna?**

--

JACK

_What?_

JOHN

_I said rise and shine sleeping beauty._

**Jack's head was pounding worse than a seven-day binger in the Korprulu system with a Tarmagarion Sevdon chaser, and that was saying something. There were definitive reasons that you didn't use two overlapping vortex-manipulators for space-time travel; something about breaking causality and existing in two when-places at once, and yet not at all, left the traveller's mind all an achy.**

JOHN

_What, are you still not talking to me? Would it help if I said I was sorry?_

JACK

_No, it wouldn't._

JOHN

_Why?_

JACK (earnest)

_Because you couldn't mean it. I know you John, you never mean it._

JOHN (not able to give a reply after that)

_..._

**Both men are chained by their wrists, and hanging by the shackles from a low ceiling in a dank and drafty subterranean cell. A smell of wet and musk from long disuse permeates the cell's stale air. The room is done up in walls and decour of bare and rough hewn permacrete, (the fifty-first century equivalent of concrete, but more indurate than crude adamantium.) What little light there is filters in from a barred window set in the single squat door leading into/out of the grim permacrete cell. **

JACK (still bitter)

_Yeah, thought you might say that._

**Several hours pass both chained men by in silence, only an idle drip-drip-drip of some far off water leak leaves the interred gentlemen with any sound. Any sound that is, until the partially disabled wrist-manipulators of the detainees start to wink and blink on and off, heralding electronic distortion and then the broadcast of reverberating laughter.**

LAUGHING VOICE (broadcasting out of the wrist-manipulators)

_Oh how sweet it is, the old triage back together again. _

JACK

_What do you want Gaheris?_

GAHERIS

_Oh my Jack, so eager to get to the climax, that's not like you at all._

JACK

_Funny. However, I think you'll find a lot about me's changed._

GAHERIS

_Oh, be that as it may, somethings never seem to change._

JACK

_Such as?_

GAHERIS

_Well, I do seem to be on top again, where as you two... well as I said, somethings never change._

JACK

_Isn't that the same thing as admitting you've gotten boring and predictable, Gaheris?_

GAHERIS

_Come now Jack, I may be many things, and have been called things many more, but 'boring and predictable' has never been one of them._

JACK

_Not from where I'm standing... er, hanging. Seems like you've got to put men in chains now if you want to keep their attentions._

GAHERIS

_Odd, as I seem to recall, last time my attentions for you involved chains Jack, you seemed quite happy to volunteer. Dalon Hex was such a good memory too._

JACK (provoking)

_I've had better._

GAHERIS (ignoring)

_Oh really now Jack, you don't expect someone as well versed as me to rise to such obvious bate like our friend John over there now do you? He always was the weakest of our triage._

JOHN (brooding silence)

_..._

GAHERIS

_You know John, you were a lot more fun before you went to murder rehab(s.)_

JACK

_Cut the crap Gaheris, what do you want?_

GAHERIS (dictating)

_Fine. Well as you can see, now that I've taken the liberty of (well actually I've taken several liberties with you both already, seeing as you both went unconscious and all, anyway) confining you to the detainment levels of HQ, I figured you'd both be more comfortable with listening to me from these positions (since I haven't left you much other choice.)_

JACK (dismissive)

_And?_

GAHERIS (taking an educator's tone, like one would with a well-meaning but rather slow child)

_And! Neos, Jack. Neos is back!_

**The electronic distortion cuts out as the broadcast words fade out, the wrist manipulators returning to their technological dormancy. John is left with a sickened look on his face, while Jack stares off blankly, his eyes glazed over as if in some terrible memory.**

**--**

**Raindrops cascaded down from out of unbroken skies in a remembered time long past and still may yet to come, the streaks of jetblack clouds trailed out behind battling aerocraft beneath the tumult of grey thunderheads overcast. Flares of orange and deepest crimson exchanged between warring factions as the cityscape below was raised to ashes. Even permacrete burned in molten fragments, becoming like megaliths of melted wax under hammering barrages of neutronic concussions and bolts of anti-neutrinos. Subatomic fires burned across the cosmos, and behemoths bulks of charnel metal crashed into cruising fleets of opposing interceptors.**

LIEUTENANT (running up to the cadré leader's command bunker)

_The Fades are advancing, ser._

JACK (watching the enemy lines from the bunker's holoscreen.)

_Hold the line!_

LIEUTENANT (reporting)

_We cant! They've sent in a flanking party, we've just lost the Sigma palisades._

JACK (resigned)

_It doesn't matter, we have to hold them here, no matter what the cost._

LIEUTENANT (alarmed)

_Even if it means the fall of the entire western alpha cadré?_

JACK (grim)

_Especially then. It will fall to our ghosts to save us._

LIEUTENANT (raising an arm to the cadré leader's shoulder)

_That's just not acceptable, ser._

JACK (pulling the hand from his shoulder)

_That's right, it is _ser_, and so long as it's my command, then it must be acceptable. There is no other choice._

LIEUTENANT (taken aback)

_Why?_

JACK

_Because it's the only chance we've got. We've got to buy more time._

LIEUTENANT

We've _got? We'll all be dead!_

JACK

_Aye, but so will the enemy._

LIEUTENANT

_How so?_

JACK (whispering)

_Delta waves._

**Suddenly the lieutenant's face goes wan and pale, almost ashen, he looks like he's about to sick up.**

LIEUTENANT (startled and disbelieving)

_Delta waves?! No! They're going to try that? Never! _

**The lieutenant slowly reaches into the folds of his agency-issue combat-jacket.**

LIEUTENANT (sad tone)

_I'm sorry, ser._

JACK (sadder tone, reaching into a frayed and weathered grey duster in response)

_So am I._

**Bang. There is the sound of a single thermal round being delivered into a lower abdomen as a blaster is drawn from a duster and fired.**

JACK (reholstering his blaster)

_So am I._

**From high above, as interceptors and behemoths careen and spiral, as rain slicks down from smoke and fire laden skies, there is a shadow, a midnight-deepest shadow advancing across the ruined cityscape. It rolls over the front lines, shirking away from the rapid-fire incendiary rounds and gushing plasma-throwers of the entrenched ground forces. However, a secondary flanking shadow also advances, already having left the Sigma palisades in darkness behind. A lone cadré leader watches this scene on the holoscreen, as he reaches into the bunker armoury for a host of sonic grenadoes and an atomic BFG. The leader hopes and prays to the nameless cosmos that it will be enough to hold the enemy here; hopes and prays that Neos will get the delta wave generators ready in time.**

**--**

**Erstwhile, between the Vortex and the Dragon's Eye, the crimson flashes recede to leave something in their wake. A Timelord shadow and the Dalek look on, and see that, that something is nothing. No, wait, not nothing. The redshifts (arrayed in military style) leave something (somethings,) but it's hard to make out against the infinite gloom of the nowhere place that they currently inhabit.**

DOCTOR (thoughtful)

_Is that company what I think it is?_

CAAN (in black humour)

_Depends, do you actually ever think?_

DOCTOR (matching the black humour)

_Oh my; do you think we're going to get to die laughing?_

CAAN

_Oh, I'd say that's a most likely possibility. The dying part anyway._

**The something and the nothing company is in fact more of a unit, than a company. A collection of bulky individuals in dark uniforms that look almost like leather, yet double as both space-suits and fully-plated body armour. They march forward in perfect rank and file, becoming more distinct as they advance on the two mad conversationalists.**

DOCTOR

_I tell you Caan, a half handful of millennia don't do much to improve their fashion statements does it?_

CAAN

_Agreed._

**Spartan and iconic military dress clad the stark soldiers marching, marching, and then halting at a raised hand from a soldier in the front line, who appears slightly larger and brawnier than the rest.**

DOCTOR

_I tell you what..._

CAAN

_What?_

DOCTOR

_No,_ I'm _supposed to tell you: _what.

**Caan's eye starts to twitch in irritation.**

CAAN

_Enough! Explain._

DOCTOR

_Alright, alright. All I was going to say is at least they're not Sontaran._

CAAN

_Explain._

DOCTOR

_I don't know, just not a fan of armed vegetables._

CAAN (thinking)

_...Their potato motif?_

DOCTOR

_Just so._

**Following a succession of hand signals from the central soldier, the 'unit' of gloomy shaded individuals realign themselves in a new formation. The unit turns out to be more of a collection of units once they spread out to be more ably counted. The tightly packed marching column did much to understate their numbers, now about three hundred abreast and eleven deep by rough estimation, they make a semicircle converging on the two.**

DOCTOR (wistful)

_You know, I'm really starting to miss fighting the Daleks and the Cybermen._

CAAN (correcting)

_You never fought the Daleks and the Cybermen, averted future, remember?_

DOCTOR (counter-correcting)

_Oh no, I still fought them. _

CAAN (adjusting)

_Fine, you just never lost to them then._

DOCTOR

_Heh, well come to think of it, altered timelines or no, I never really lost to either, even then. They were just Cybermen and Daleks after all, not that big a deal._

CAAN

_You know, I'm starting to wonder if that blind arrogance is unflappable confidence or just willful ignorance._

DOCTOR (smiling)

_Hmm, well either way I'm still smashing._

**Caan makes no comment as the semi-circle tightens, and the lead soldier in a familiar dark uniform steps forward. Both Dalek and Doctor, who is not the Doctor, realize that the uniforms are not entirely unchanged in millennia after all. They're still pretty much the same, save for being done up in crimson piping and scrollwork for trim. Moreover, every soldier seems to have the common sigul of a bleeding eye upon their lapels and breast plates, and with a midnight sunburst emblazoned upon their helms.**

DOCTOR (smile fades)

_Now that I think about it, I may not have lost to the Daleks, but I did lose everyone else; including myself._

**Caan's lone eye turns away from the advancing lead soldier (with the symbol of the golden hand gilded on one pauldron and the nine-pointed white-star enamelled on the other;) and looks at the Doctor uncertain.**

DOCTOR

_I'm serious, I lost myself and you found me, you stopped me from becoming... well from becoming me; and I thank you._

**Caan looks about to reply, but both Dalek and Doctor are interrupted by the long hiss of vapour-equalisation. The taller and brawnier lead soldier (with golden hand and white star) has hit the decompression locks upon his armoured-collar, which is attached to his full helm, and now he slowly removes that bulky helmet.**

LEAD SOLDIER

_Toh. Roh. Goh. Soh. Shoh. Moh. Roh. Droh. Foh!_

_((Identify species and origin. You will be catalogued.))_

**--**


End file.
